‘MoC will produce athletes for Tokyo 2020 Olympics’

It was another history-making event for Making of Champions (MoC) yesterday in Lagos, as the company presented 16 athletes they will sponsor to various competitions within and outside the country.

At the ceremony at Alaka Estate in Surulere yesterday, MoC’s Founder/CEO Bambo Akani, said the organization would do everything possible to produce athletes that will be part of Team Nigeria’s contingent to Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games.

“MoC celebrated its fifth year anniversary last year, and we are happy for the successes we have made in both local and international competitions within this short period,” he said. “But we are looking ahead to other bigger competitions, including Tokyo 2020 with the hope of producing some athletes that will be part of Team Nigeria’s contingent. It will be a huge task asking our young athletes to go for medals in Tokyo 2020, but it will a major leap for them to make the team. We still have two athletics seasons before Tokyo 2020,” Akani stated.

In the MoC are experienced coaches, including Olympic medallist Deji Aliu and Gloria Alozie. A UK-based physiotherapist, Kehinde Adeyo, was added to the technical team yesterday.

Speaking at the occasion, Alozie, who is Nigeria’s first and only Olympic and World Championships medallist (male and female) in the hurdles, said she had gained a lot at MoC, where she has teamed up with Deji Aliu.

The Sydney 2000 silver medallist, who joined MoC in 2015, told The Guardian that she was passionate about raising future world-beaters for Nigeria. The soft-spoken Alozie, who narrowly missed a gold medal at Sydney Olympics, is in charge of MoC’s sprint hurdles.

Alozie tasked the newly unveiled athletes to be cool headed, just as she assured them that the MoC would assist them to realize their dreams of becoming world champions.

Among the newly unveiled athletes was Emmanuel Ojeli, a beneficiary of MoC’s student-athlete scholarship. He won a bronze medal for Lagos State at the 2018 National Sports Festival in Abuja. There was also Ifeanyi Christian, who is MoC’s first para-athlete, Kelechi Mgbemena Christian, who left Nigeria for Harare, Zimbabwe with her family at the age of 10 years.

She was part of the 2017 African Junior Championships in Algeria, where she won a gold medal for Zimbabwe.

Others include Suraj Habib, who has to relocate from Zaria to Lagos to pursue his dreams of becoming a household name in athletics.